Serb refugees boycott Kosovo vote

In the first five hours of voting only a few individuals had cast their ballots at polling stations in other parts of Serbia, out of more than 100,000 refugees who are eligible to vote, the Tanjug news agency said.

Serbs have vowed to boycott the election, the second since the 1998-99 war in the southern Serbian province, citing security fears after NATO peacekeepers failed to stop two days of riots by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority in March.

A polling station at one Serbian village read: "Europe, is there any hope when you are calling slaves to vote?"

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica has supported the boycott but President Boris Tadic urged Serbs to vote in the UN-backed elections for the sake of better relations with the international community.

Kosovo remains technically a province of Serbia although it has been a UN protectorate since NATO intervened to end the war between Serbian security forces and separatist ethnic Albanian guerrillas.

Some 200,000 Serbs fled the province of 1.9 million people in the wake of the international intervention, fearing revenge attacks for years of oppression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority by the Serbian government.